Value-Based Decision Environment: Vision and Application

Abstract

The ever increasing complexity and environmental constraints associated with aerospace and defense projects are putting pressure on traditional organizational structures for design decision making. No longer can the design problem be assimilated and steered by a single chief engineer. Rather, in order to nd consensus, design involves a complex iterative process between the dierent specialist committees (weights, aerodynamics, structures, cost, etc.). Furthermore, there is a growing need to take into account the life cycle implications of low level design decisions in addition to their more direct implications on performance. The Decision Environment for Complex Designs (DECODE) project at the University of Southampton aims to explore how the design process may be streamlined under these circumstances. The case study presented here centers around a maritime surveillance UAV for search and rescue tasks, developed in association with the UK Coastguard. The focus is on value driven design and how advances in software engineering, rationale capture, operational simulation, and rapid prototyping can be leveraged to create an integrated design suite that allows the rapid design and manufacture of low cost civilian UAVs.

Value-driven product service systems development: Methods and industrial applications

“…Other methods focus more on the configuration of the engineering characteristics of a product that creates the highest value during its lifecycle (e.g. Isaksson et al, 2013or Gorissen et al, 2014, often playing the role of enablers for knowledge-sharing or decision-making. (2004) do not make use of the VDD term, they share a set of fundamental goals that the following VDD methods and applications try to achieve.…”

Model-Driven Decision Arena: An Aerospace Case Study

“…Intuitively, these models take the form of monetary optimization functions ) based on Net Present Value (NPV) or Surplus Value (SV) approaches, the latter often being used as surrogate object for long-term profitability associated with a given design concept (see : Curran et al, 2010;Fanthorpe et al, 2011;Cheung et al, 2012). The main argument in favor of a VDD approach is found in several case studies from SE research (see Collopy, 2012;Gorissen et al, 2014) that shows how requirements hinder a systematic exploration of design alternatives, causing the most valuable ones to be rarely identified. More recent contributions exploit qualitative value models, in the attempt to improve communication among decision makers (Collopy, 2012;Soban et al, 2012.…”

Aircraft Performance Analysis in Conceptual Design Phase based on System-of-Systems Simulations

“…In the past, the top-down decisions about aircraft performance parameters in conceptual design phase are usually made by chief engineers based on their experience, intuition and judgment [1]. And the value of original target design parameters are often set according to the existing aircraft or systems.…”